Barry Tompkins: Thoughts on the post office and Canada geese in Marin

NOW THAT THE weeping and moaning of this post-Super Bowl week has been reduced to the occasional sob, I believe that, as a public service, there are a couple of things you should know that affect our lifestyle in these parts.

They both involve fowl — one of the "ou" variety, and one of the "ow" variety.

The "ou" foul has to do with our vaunted U.S. Postal Service. I grew up thinking, "What a cool job"; you get to carry around a nifty leather satchel, meet all the neighbors and, when the bag's empty, it's down to the local gin mill for a shot and a beer — then lunch, then home to the little woman and the 2.5 children.

Six days a week, like clockwork he'd be there delivering the goods, like offers of a $19 paint job for your car at Earl Scheib's or news from Brooklyn that Lucky the dog had just exploded after eating a cherry bomb out of the garbage can. And that uniform — wow — how becoming the color gray was.

As I grew older, my desire to join the Postal Service — or any other service — waned. And, despite those nifty "Postage Due" rubber stamps, I opted to pursue other interests. Besides, as I matured and realized I'd never be able to afford that $19 paint job and that most of what the mailman brought were bills — and thus tears. I developed a suspicious eye toward anyone carrying a leather satchel.

And now, the ultimate blow, the USPS will no longer deliver on Saturdays. I sure hope obstetricians don't follow the lead of their postal worker peers.

When I first thought about this injustice, I realized that in my town they don't deliver on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays or Sundays either; but that's beside the point.

It seems that Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general, recently discovered a thing called the Internet. And, that first-class stamped letters have dropped from 51 billion as recently as 2002 to about 147 in 2012 (of which 128 were returned for lack of required postage). As a result, the USPS finds itself with about $11 billion dollars in losses — about $5 billion of that being the direct result of absolutely no one mailing letters any longer, and the other $6 billion plunged into the tush of the USPS-sponsored Lance Armstrong to make him "carry the mail" up alpine mountains that are unclimbable unless you are either a big horn sheep or so loaded on steroids that you don't need a bike to win the Tour de France.

We are now in the package delivery business, Mr. Donahoe suggested. And please, don't tell him there's a place called FedEx that's also doing that. Finding out there's an Internet

and a company delivering packages in the same day would be very un-USPS-like. Generally, everything takes three days.

Which brings me to the "ow" fowl. These fowl are of the two-footed variety, and I write this as a warning to any self-respecting Moffitt's Canada goose: GET OUT. GET OUT NOW.

It seems the Las Gallinas Valley Sanitary District thinks there are just too many geese around, and they're taking steps to rid themselves of these pests. And do you know how? They're killing babies — oh my God, infanticide right in our midst. They are creeping around the nesting places of these birds and oiling their eggs. That means the embryos can't breathe, so what you have are scrambled goose eggs in their own oil. Pick up a dozen tomorrow at Andronico's.

But, here's the rub: Barbara Salzman, president of the Marin Audubon Society, tells us that these particular geese do not migrate like their peers because, well, they just kind of dig it here. Don't we all? Their mothers and fathers haven't taught them that geese are migratory birds. Once again, like all of us in Marin, they think their kids are "special" and have not so much as told them a Mother Goose story that could save the lives of their children and their children's children. All the while, biologists are sneaking around at night, stepping in goose feces and oiling their eggs. Probably thinking, "What the hell am I doing here when I could be working at the post office?"